


Me, watching you run

by christchex



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, The Magicians AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 18:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christchex/pseuds/christchex
Summary: The figure in front of him was dressed straight from a Renaissance faire and Michael couldn’t take him seriously.“So, I have to confront my worst memory to unlock a door, and hope that I find my friends and tell them I’m a live?”The ren faire reject nodded.“Should be easy. It’s not like I have 28 years of trauma.”-A Magicians AU, where Michael is trapped in his own head and needs to find his way out.





	Me, watching you run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reachedthebitterend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachedthebitterend/gifts).
  * Inspired by [holding on the what used to be (addicted to a memory)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/471074) by reachedthebitterend. 



> So reachedthebitterend wrote a wonderful [Magicians AU](http://reachedthebitterend.tumblr.com/post/183316842682/holding-on-to-what-we-used-to-be-addicted-to-a) based on my prompts and my prompting. You should definitely go read that because it's wonderful! As soon as I read it I had to write Michael's point of view. There's some repeated dialogue to ensure continuity.
> 
> Anyway, I'm finally putting it on AO3.

“You just walked away.”

There is no emotion in his voice, no pain, no heartbreak. Hell, there isn’t even disappointment. All there is, is one simple fact: Michael was given everything he wanted, was offered the thing he wanted more than anything, more than magic, and he just walked away.

“You should have known that this was it. This was the memory you worked so hard to forget. He loved you. He finally admitted he loved you. He was finally ready, and you couldn’t let yourself have one damn good thing.”

-

The figure in front of him was dressed straight from a Renaissance faire and Michael couldn’t take him seriously.

“So, I have to confront my worst memory to unlock a door, and hope that I find my friends and tell them I’m a live?”

The ren faire reject nodded.

“Should be easy. It’s not like I have 28 years of trauma.”

-

There was a plan and they were supposed to stick to it, but Michael knew the moment Alex  said,  “I’ll do it,” that he would rather die than trap Alex for eternity.

“It’s ok,” he had said to the room at large. “I lived a full life. I fell in love, got married, had a family.” His smile was small and sad, nostalgia for a lifetime that technically didn’t exist. “I got everything I wanted. I don’t mind doing this.”

Michael couldn’t let it happen though. He couldn’t watch Alex die as a monster took over his body. He couldn’t let Alex sacrifice himself because he thought he had no future in this timeline.

“Alex, don’t-” Michael started but Alex cut him off quickly.

“As my friend, you should respect my decision.”

And didn’t that hurt, Alex’s constant reminder that that was all they were. Every “my friend Michael” and “you’re such a good friend” hurt. They hurt worse now than they had ever before. Somehow, it hurt worse when it was you doing the running.

-

Michael started with the murders and the coverups. Really, how could anything be worse than that?

“I don’t think this is the right place,” Fantasy Weirdo said as they watched Michael levitate three corpses. There was not a door to be seen anywhere in that  god-awful  desert.

“How is there anything worse than when I helped coverup two murders? Lied to everyone I cared about? My first two uses of magic were to coverup murders!”

“But why did you do it? It wasn’t selfish, it was protection. There were bright points to these days.”

“You have to be crazy to think that there are any bright points anywhere.”

Shrill screeching sounded in the distance.

“Excellent. Now I get to deal with physical monsters on top of my emotional ones.”

They fled the memory before they could be attacked.

-

Michael tried to kill the monster before Alex could trick it into his body and into the trap.

Michael should have thought this plan through more. The monster, in anger flew at Michael.

He didn’t remember the rest.

-

Max and Isobel were arguing about their summer plans when Michael heard a knock on the door. That wasn’t right. No one should be knocking on the house’s door now; it was too  late,  and every student should have been in bed or in their own common areas. No one should be outside.

“I’ll get it,” Max had said when neither Isobel  nor  Michael moved despite being closer to the door.

“No, don’t bother,” Michael had said, but Max ignited him.

The pounding grew frantic as Max made his way to the door. When he opened it, a man dressed in weirdly period, but obviously Fillory-influence clothing came in and slammed the door behind him.

“I have been trying to get into the Happy Place. Why would t you let me in?” He addresses his question to Michael, ignoring Max right in front of him.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about man.”

“We’re in your memories. This is your Happy Place, the one place we are safe from the monster.”

“Get out,” Michael has said, not wanting to deal with any ridiculousness. “Come on Max, make him leave.”

Max ignored him.

“He’s not really here. He’s a memory too. Just imagine he’s not here, see what happens.”

Michael did. Max disappeared. Well shit. Maybe the weird man was right.

“Huh, even in my imagination he ignores me.”

-

Somehow watching it happen all over again is worse than living through it.

-

“ So,  every time we leave my happy place, we get attacked by weird dementor looking assholes. Or like, murderous birdmen.”

“Yes, which is why we have to stay in the Happy Place.”

“Yeah, not gonna happen. I need to make sure my friends know I’m alive. How do I do that?”

“You don’t just get out. We’re in your mind, in your memory. The only way out, even for a few moments, is to find the thing your buried down so deep and confront it.”

“What was yours?”

“The day I left my home.”

Michael looked at the man in disbelief. That was it? That was his most traumatic memory?

-

Alex was gone in the morning.

Michael tried hard not to think about it, any of it. He tried not to think about Alex’s body under his own, Alex insistent lips, and his own hunger. He tried not to think about the heat in his chest, the heat of their bodies, the slick sheen of sweat on their bodies. He tried not to think about how damn happy we was when he fell asleep and the emptiness in his chest the next morning when he woke up alone.

There was no door in that memory either.

-

They needed a distraction, a shield to stand between them and the monsters.

“Who are they?”

Michael looked at Ren-Faire-Reject and then turned around.

“These,” he said with a vague gesture, “are my most terrifying friends. Max, during one of his ‘Liz doesn’t love me’ rages. Alex, that one time he punched Valenti in the face. And Isobel, who is always terrifying.” He gave his memory friends a small smile. “They have my back always.”

He and his friends moved toward the front door. Memory Isobel smirk.

“I wonder if I can melt a monster’s brain too.”

-

“It was kind of…”

“…beautiful.”

He and Alex stay in silence, broken only by the sob that Michael had tried to  hide  as laughter.

Michael remembers the feeling, the anger and resentment and pain. Michael remembers his bitter words even though he tried to forget them in the months that followed.

“You spent so much time angry that he kept running, that you never thought to ask why.”

Michael stares at himself as he stood on the steps with Alex next to him. Broken glass lay at their feet. Michael wonders if that was all that was broken that day.

-

Michael tried not to think about the scent, acidic and floral and strange. He tried not to think about the days of wandering, the weeks of waiting. He tried not to think about sharing a bed with Alex every single night and never touching him. He tried not to think about how he could tell Alex was in pain, but he could do nothing, not without his magic. He tried not to think about the tiny tin of salve he made for Alex, and how that was apparently the tipping point.

He tried not to think about the fact that they spent fifty years together, in love and happy, and how he could never get it back.

It’s been months since that lifetime and Michael was exhausted. He didn’t know how Alex did this for years.

-

“What if you ask again, and I say yes?”

-

There was no door in the group home when they relived the exorcism and they lost memory Max to the monsters.

There was no door in the halls of the school library where he helped ruin Liz’s chance for revenge.

There was no door in any of the corners of his mind that he packed away. Not where he lost memory Isobel as they watched young Max and Isobel get adopted. Not when he buried a body at age 12. Not where he lost his engineering scholarship, though he definitely didn’t expect it there.

“Of course not,” said memory Alex. “If you kept it, you would never have ended up at Brakebills with me.”

-

“Do you want me Alex?” Michael’s voice was low, intentionally seductive. He had Alex pressed against the door to his room. Each sentence was punctuated by the roll of his hips and a kiss to Alex’s neck. “Do you want to date me? To be my boyfriend, be my lover, my everything? I feel like the world was frozen until you breathed fire into me. So, tell me- do you want me?”

Michael closed his eyes as he watched. The answer had been no.

-

“This isn’t working. I suggest you just give up.”

Michael stared the weird Memory Guy. No way in hell was he giving up.

“You have one friend left. You have no idea where your doorway out is. If you die here, you die for good. I suggest you stop and just enjoy your Happy Place.”

“Yeah sorry not an option.” Michael’s voice was flat. He confronted too many repressed memories today for any type of emotion.

Memory Alex stood off to the side. He kept his gaze on the list of potential memories to explore. All were crossed out.

“If you don’t mind telling us,” memory Alex said, “what was your memory?”

“It was t he  day he left home. Not every helpful.”

Alex looked at Michael, his gaze heavy. “I think that depends.” He turned to look at Memory Guy. “Why was it so awful?”

Memory Guy stared at the two of them in amazement. “What do you mean? I left home! Of course, it was awful! I left the place that I was safe, where I was loved! I left the place that held everyone that I cared about! I left them behind…” He trailed off, voice quivering and tears in his eyes.

Michael shared a look with his memory of Alex. It was an older memory, of when they first met. Alex was still in the tail end of his punk phase, nose ring and eyeliner. He looked completely different to the guy he was now, or the guy he was before a monster took over Michael’s body. Yet, he looked at Michael in the same way, the way that Alex used to say Michael looked at him- with love and adoration. The way they looked at each other every day for fifty years.

“See,” memory Alex said. “It all depends. Home doesn’t mean much for us, not when we never had one. This,” he gestures around the house they lived in until recently, “this is as close as we’ve ever come. Remember what Maria said? Home doesn’t have to be a white picket fence…”

“It can be a person,” Michael whispered. He knew where he had to go.

-

“Apparently it only works if we don’t have any other choice.”

Michael watches himself break the glass and then break his and Alex’s hearts.

Michael watches as Alex turns away, as Alex desperately tries to hold his tears in, to hold back his sob with his hands. He watches Alex nod. “Okay. Sorry I brought it up.”

Michael watches as he draws closer to Alex. He remembers getting closer, reaching out his hand to offer comfort, to take it all back. He didn’t though. Instead he scoffed at himself and left.

Michael hears himself scoff, sees himself turn to leave.

“You spent so long being angry at him for never giving us a chance, and this is what you do? You tell him he’s scared and then you run away the moment he decides to be brave?”

Michael takes a step closer to himself, and then another and another. As he  walks,  he says, “He asked you to give him a chance and you stomp all over it? You throw your fears in his face and say they’re inevitable? You were scared that someone so good could possibly love you for real, and you fucking ran.”

His footsteps lead him past himself, past the memory of the worst moment of his life, past the moment where he gave up his love and ran in fear. He makes his way to Alex. He faces the man he loves and cradles his face, the way he did every day for a lifetime that technically never happened.

“I’m gonna get out of here Alex. And when I do, I promise I’m gonna stop being a coward. I’m gonna stop running. The only running I’m gonna do is running back to you.”

He places a soft kiss to the Alex’s lips, an echo of how the memory should have played out but didn’t.

Behind him a rickety old door appears. Michael moves to open it.

-

_ In another place at the same time, the monster at the end of the world loses control over the meat suit he’s wearing. For the first time in weeks, the body’s eyes aren’t vacant. Now they are full of love. For the first time in weeks, the voice that comes out isn’t bored and malicious. When it speaks, Alex knows the truth. For one glorious minute it is Michael talking. _

_ “I’m alive. And once you get this thing out of me, I will ask again, do you understand me?” _


End file.
